A reality check on the Oseroff scandal and the APA Blog (UPDATED)

Given that the Twitter Red Guard continue to dissemble and moan about Professor Stock's and my expose of the APA blog scandal, perhaps a reality check is in order.

Nathan Oseroff, a man in his late 20s, who has a prominent on-line position with the American Philosophical Association (that he continuously advertises), took it upon himself to launch a jihad against feminist philosophers, especially philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) who held what he, in his superior wisdom, deemed to be a "morally unacceptable" opinion about the proposed gender self-ID law in the United Kingdom (this law would permit anyone to redesignate their gender for all legal purposes without any medical or other oversight, evaluation or waiting periods). This man used his role at the APA blog to post a comment attacking Prof. Stock on the APA's blog that violated blog guidelines (the editor in charge of the blog apologized to Prof. Stock, removed the comment and briefly suspended the offender--remarkably, he has not been removed entirely).

This adult male also took to social media to defame Prof. Stock as someone who directed "hate" at her students and colleagues. Doing so would be grossly unprofessional conduct, but this man's only evidence for his libelous charge was that Prof. Stock had a different view about the gender self-ID Law in the UK than he did. In addition, it turns out that this man also abused his role at the APA to "police" the conference practices of a philosophy society that had actually accepted one of his papers, even though the APA, let alone its blog or its editors, has no authority about how professional societies referee papers.

This adult man, who is almost 30 years old, objected that no one should criticize him since he is a PhD student in philosophy. Some of his fellow Twitteratti, endorsed this view (unsurprisingly, they are all similarly situated: adults in school engaged in stupid on-line conduct!).

I suggest that Donald Trump should enroll in a PhD program soon, since some segment of the population apparently believes that misconduct is entitled to a free pass if the perpetrator is an adult PhD student. (Unfortunately for Trump, that segment may consist only of the Twitter Red Guard.)

ADDENDUM: There's apparently an official acronym for what Mr. Oseroff has tried to do here: DARVO: "DARVO refers to a reaction perpetrators of wrong doing...may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. DARVO stands for 'Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.' The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim -- or the whistle blower -- into an alleged offender."

UPDATE: Philosopher Daniel Kaufman (Missouri state) points out to me that Oseroff is now accusing Professor Stock, again without basis, of promoting anti-semitic conspiracy theories. Read the article to which Professor Stock linked, to get a sense for how thoroughly dishonest this guy is.

ANOTHER: Thanks to those sending along other bits of Mr. Oseroff's bizarre Twitter feed. I'll give two examples related to the issues du jour.

After I pointed out the hypocrisy of philosopher Adriel Trott--who participated in the most notorious case of on-line mobbing and harassment of a philosopher (Rebecca Tuvel) in recent years--purporting to lecture anyone about on-line harassment (as well as pointing out the conflation of genuine harassment with criticism), Oseroff tweeted the following:

Can't wait to hear all the established philosophers say they stand with @AdrielTrott after she was harassed by a philosopher after she gave a talk about harassment in philosophy.

4:23 AM - 19 Oct 2018

So in this silly man's upside-down world, criticizing someone's hypocrisy regarding on-line harassment is itself "harassment." But he's really taken to this lie, since he comes back to it the same day:

Current state of philosophy: a philosopher says 'Harassing other philosophers is bad' and then immediately get harassed, then another philosopher says 'Harassing other philosophers is bad', then *they'll* get harassed, and then...

1:08 PM - 19 Oct 2018

No doubt pointing out the violence Oseroff is doing to both language and truth will be deemed another case of "harassment" by this man. But when he defames someone, abuses his position at the APA Blog (to post comments that violate blog guidelines [which then have to be deleted by others] or to "police" other members of the profession), or throws around reckless accusations of anti-semitism, that's apparently normal non-harassing behavior!

Since Mr. Oseroff is now cracking up in full view of the profession, I'm going to let the rest of his delusional displays pass in silence--assuming he doesn't resume his malicious campaign of defamation of Kathleen Stock or others, of course. But maybe he's learned something, appearances notwithstanding?